Simple Truths

The newspaper is carrying the story of a woman in Kolkata who had been gangraped at gun-point. The Chief Minister, a woman herself, said the story had been concocted by the opposition to malign the administration of her government. In a week’s time, it will be ten years since the Godhra happened and the fabric of life in Gujarat was forever ruined. The Indian cricket team is having problems, the senior players cannot seem to get along with each other. Meanwhile, Vedanta corporation has come out with a new 360 campaign to boost their PR. Guess killing the tribals and uprooting them their lands doesn’t do wonders for your PR. Fortunately the good folks at Ogilvy & Mather with their proprietary insight-mining tools can set the record straight. I look at their effort. A grimy little toothy rural girl, probably a child actress selected from a folder of atleast 200 other prospective candidates that the production house had on offer, runs around explaining the joy in her life because of Vedanta’s CSR efforts.

I wonder if the girl goes to school in one of those private schools where they have air-conditioned classes and teach horse-riding on the weekends . I wonder if she will want to grow up and become an actress. I wonder if she will fret over the food she eats and if the length of her skirt is making her look sexy enough. I wonder if she’ll frown at women who look frumpy. Would she judge them for not drinking, not smoking and not experimenting enough in their lives?

I wonder if she’ll think of joining a Facebook candle-light vigil event after reading a story like that of the Kolkata gangrape case.

*

3:29 PM

27^th February, 2012

PS: Additional viewing, Anil Thackeray's [some "ad-man"] review of the Vedanta ad | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqBDFlb_ea0

Some days I just want to rip this world apart, limb from limb.

Written on inspiration to the tune of ‘It is Hard to Get Around the Wind’ by Alex Turner

You sit by your window, and slowly everything moves,

but you’re left behind like you always have been.

There are no heroes, there are not even bad men,

everything is so ordinary that you want an adventure.

You want to leave your books behind

with paragraphs of old poetry and faded photographs.

All of their forgotten memories don’t register

and you try to think about how you used to laugh.

There is no simple map to the stars,

there are no easy ways about.

Some stories have good endings,

some just, y’know, like to muck about.

You wonder what immortality would be like.

Kind of like sitting on a beach

watching the waves with infinite hope,

and you grope your way around into the dark.

And you sit and wonder what you’ve been upto,

so many years have just gone about.

You feel lost in time and days just blur by.

And you wonder what the fuss is about.

It is not like you’re missing out on anything

because everything will always be the same.

*

9:09 AM

26^th February, 2012

Fugitive

I do not know if this is the end of my life

or if there is such a thing as an end.

I do not know much,

I do not see the point as such.

Slowly like a choking mist

I have felt loneliness envelop me.

And increasingly in that mist, I have lost myself

and found happiness or something like it.

And bit by bit, I’ve found myself

getting faded, always jaded,

till nothing remains except my name

which has always been the same –

and a few misinformed anecdotes in the memory

of some people few.

This life of mine has always been askew.

It started wrong, never took flight,

I persevered but it never felt right.

Bones and dust, and life and rust,

all getting jaded, perpetually faded.

Like the forgotten memory of a bad play,

I disappear in small pieces and bits.

And in the timeless depths of chasms between those pieces –

I look to find happiness.

Or atleast something that feels a little like it.

*

5.50 AM

12^th February, 2012

Waterbearer of the Verandah Sills

It was the strangest kind of evening,

everything was calm, everything was poised and still.

There was time in the air

and laid bare, beyond were carpets of grassy gardens

without any music to keep them there.

The waterbearer moved before me.

His purpose a mystery, his movements most nuanced.

He swished his little vessel ,

cleaning apparently the verandah sills.

Neither slow, never too fast

with the toils of one who knows what he’s doing,

he went about, on this strangest kind of evening.

Inside the ornate halls, in the warm light of glassy lamps,

I marvel at the architecture. Mughal, is it?

Maybe a smattering of a British visit,

I reach the dining hall. There is a crowd here.

I do not care. I do not care.

I know you are here.

I know not how, but I know you have brought me here.

So I mill around, without smiling,

vaguely lost till I settle upon a solitary chair.

The show begins. The man speaks well.

The crowd loves him. Everybody is having a good time.

I am getting lost inside my head now.

Somehow, the words lose their meaning.

Nothing remains.

In this universe of incoherence and glee and light,

Only the sight of you rescues me and brings me back to life.

I remember you now, sitting with your beautiful friend –

beautiful, oh so exquisitely beautiful

that I remember not a single feature of hers.

I remember only you and your laugh ringing free,

your dress, your posture, your eyes

the only things I can see.

You remain enthralled, the man tells his stories.

I listen vaguely sometimes.

In the room behind him, he says,

there is a couple who’ve gone on an adventure

fifty-one times.

His speech rhymes.

The crowd clap in joy as he peeks behind the curtains again.

Fifty-two, he joyously proclaims,

the room erupts with laughter. You say to your friend,

“He is so funny”, but he says to us all,

that now, he must refrain.

The show dissolves into the ether,

I do not know what happened much.

The crowd buzzes noisily out to tea,

I think you’ll go with them but I do not look to find out.

I walk the opposite way out.

On my way I see many fabrics hung out,

their purpose a mystery, their make very nuanced.

I pick the ugliest out. Blue and wooley and stout.

It does not preen, it feels warm and sincere

and feels like its seen a stories few.

I pick it because it reminds me of you.

I walk out the verandah again.

It is definitely darker now.

The night is coming.

I like the ugly fabric’s touch

I do not like to feel much.

I slow down. I slow down.

The waterbearer is here again.

He still moves.

His purpose a mystery, his movements most nuanced.

He swishes his little vessel ,

Neither slow, never too fast

with the toils of one who knows what he’s doing,

he goes about, on this strangest kind of evening.

*

12:15 PM

25^th January, 2012

Rumblings in the forest

In the silent shadows of your great, great towers –
your missions and truths of endless powers,
lie a race of my most humble men.
Weak and fragile, we cower and we run,
we do whatever it is that you want to be done.
We speak simple things and we stay low
like we should.
and We nod our heads like we understood.
And so it has been for many a thousand year.
But...
even in the deep forests, do sometimes giant trees are fallen.
And the deafening roar of a maddening tidal wave
is preceded by the utter silence.
A quiet for a thousand years now,
I shudder to imagine how devastatingly loud
the madness now will be.

5: 45 PM
14th September, 2010

Anay

An insipid afternoon wasted by a red table,
the continuing vagaries of urban fables.
Here, the television speaks
here the computer croaks.
All the while, a jaded Anay watches listlessly -
the human sponge, he soaks.

6:38 PM
27th December, 2009

On a lonely night, by a glass of bourbon

The tired sea stretches on and on,
so lost and forlorn – without a song or a rhyme,
and no conception of geography or time.
Round the world it goes on for ages to return
to this still window of mine.
And by this window, I have been sitting for so long,
that now this still window too begins to whine.

1:58 AM
8th October, 2010